1. (Science: chemical) a massive, somewhat impure variety of quartz, in colour usually of a gray to brown or nearly black, breaking with a conchoidal fracture and sharp edge. It is very hard, and strikes fire with steel.
An obsolete appliance for lighting the miner at his work, in which flints on a revolving wheel were made to produce a shower of sparks, which gave light, but did not inflame the fire damp. Flint stone, a hard, siliceous stone; a flint. Flint wall, a kind of wall, common in England, on the face of which are exposed the black surfaces of broken flints set in the mortar, with quions of masonry. Liquor of flints, a solution of silica, or flints, in potash. To skin a flint, to be capable of, or guilty of, any expedient or any meanness for making money.